Page 58 of The Fall
“Breathe,” he whispers.
I don’t know who needs to hear that more. My chest heaves, matching his uneven gasps.
Blair rocks forward, a filthy, slow grind of his hips, stretching me wider, filling me to near breaking. The drag of his cock is endless, shoving every scrap of air from my lungs.
“Want you,” I choke out when I can muster enough air, my hands wild in his hair. “Want all of you.”
He’s careful with me at first, then, when he knows I want nothing held back, less so. He worships me.
I tip my head back, mouth open, and let my body rearrange around him, as if it were made for this. My moans spill into his mouth. Sweat glues us skin-to-skin. He finds my hand, weaving our fingers tight on the mattress by my head, locking us into one unbroken loop. Candle shadows merge us into a single writhing shape on the wall.
He moves in long, slow strokes, and I become nothing but sensation. My hips lift to meet him, greedy for more, wanting him deeper. We’re heat against heat, kissing harder than breathing. I’m falling into him, into us. He shifts, angling sharper, and something clenches, a knot of need tightening with every thrust. I hook my ankles around him.
“There?”
My thighs quake as I nod. He captures my lower lip in a kiss, gasping into me as he fucks me harder, right there.
“More.”
He obeys. He hits it again, again, his cock hitting that desperate spot. My own dick throbs between us, leaking and untouched. Blair bends me further, hiking my leg over hisshoulder. The stretch bites deeper, and so exquisite. Every thrust flays me open; I’ve never been so whole.
“Blair,” I choke out.
“That’s it. Let go for me.” His voice scrapes against my ear.
His rhythm stumbles. He’s close.
We lock eyes, and I shatter.
Blair surges, a final, possessive thrust. The wave crests, a bright, brutal release fracturing me into jagged bliss. He swallows my scream with his kiss as he spills into me, and I swallow his roar as he shudders and falls apart. He collapses, pulling me tight, his heart slamming against mine.
Slowly, the room returns: guttering candles, the grit of sweat on my tongue. His breath steadies against my hair. His lips land on my temple and stay. “Okay?”
I nod against his skin, unable to form words yet. My body has been rewired. I’m more than okay. I am… whole. And I know this wasn’t my first time, but … it also was, in a way.
As long as I have this, as long as I have him, I can face anything, do anything, become anything. Even myself. So let the sea pull me out past the breakers and into the wild blue; with Blair wrapped around me, I am no longer afraid of how deep I might go. He is both tide and shore: every wave that threatens to swallow me ends up carrying me home to him.
His thumb traces my jaw. His touch centers me, corralling the scatter of my thoughts, and his blue eyes flick to mine, hurricane-deep, a little unsteady. “I love you. Never forget that.”
A plea threads through those words, ragged as torn skin. Love like this burns hot enough to change everything it touches—my past, my future, the hollow places inside me I have hidden even from myself.
“Say it again,” I breathe into the dark.
His lips find the shell of my ear. “I love you.” Then softer, like a secret: “I love you.” Once more: “I love you.”
“I could never forget you,” I promise.
Free fall.
There’s no ground, no air, only the drop. I hang, spine snapped into a parenthesis. The bruised dark teems with suspended glass, each splinter backlit by shattered lights. A metallic scream threads through the emptiness. Then water, rising everywhere at once, seals out sound, closes over my head, pours down my throat?—
My eyes snap open. The world shudders back into focus as I sit straight up in bed, gasping, my hands at my neck, dragging in air. Darkness crowds the windows, the room silent but for my heart pounding in my ears. Every breath rasps.
I wait, listening for the echo of the fall, half-certain it will start again if I move. Every muscle screams, taut with a terror that has no name, no source. If I breathe deeper, I feel the fall again. If I close my eyes, the room erodes, and water floods in.
It was a dream, a nightmare.
But the fear remains.
